AFTER an eight-year absence Wayne Garnett is returning to bowls.
"The appetite is certainly there and I am really excited about getting back," said the former England under-25 skip who made his name with Wellworthy but has now joined Dorchester and will be in action at his new club when their outdoor season opens this weekend.
Business commitments forced him to push bowls into the background in 2000, the woods only being taken out of hibernation for an annual tilt at the Bournemouth Open tournament each August.
Garnett realised there were not enough hours in a day what with his established delicatessen in Dorchester after opening a second shop in Westbourne, Bournemouth.
However, now that the Westbourne outlet has been sold and he has purchased a bed and breakfast business in Dorchester town centre near his original shop, he has more leisure time and hence the chance to resume his bowls career at the age of 39 with what is now his local club.
He added: "I must admit I have not pined to play bowls in the years I have been away and I felt it was always something I could go back to.
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"This season gives me the chance to test the water and see whether the buzz is there which I think it will be because I am really looking forward to playing again.
"I am determined to get to Dorchester and play as much as I did before - and
that means the county competitions and the league and I have also said I am
interested and available for the Middleton Cup."
Garnett has made over 70 Middleton Cup appearances for Dorset - including the 1990 final and semi-final three years later at Worthing - and also qualified for the national championships with Wellworthy in the triples (alongside Syd Brice and Jim Williams), fours and under-25 singles.
In this summer's county championships he has entered the triples with Steven Huttley and Jamie Lockwood as well as the fours.
Garnett is now the senior statesman for those youngsters and he is particularly keen to encourage and nurture young bowling talent - something which was not so prevalent when he took up the sport as an 11-year-old with his late father David at Portland Borstal Officers in 1979.
He said: "Some of the older members in those days wondered what a whipper-snapper like me was doing on the green.
"But the boy quickly established himself and by the time he was 15 he was a PBO league skip and was playing for the county representative side.
At the age of 18 he was in the Middleton Cup team and subsequently left PBO for Wellies where he gained England honours in 1992 and 1993 and won the Weymouth Open singles in 1995.
He rates finishing runner-up in the 1994 Bournemouth Open as his finest singles' performance - and if he returns to that level of form more trophies will be forthcoming in his born-again career.
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